Founders receive >400.000 € by EIT Digital to start their entrepreneurial career.
27 entrepreneurial teams from 12 countries have successfully completed the EIT Digital Venture Program, jointly organized with ABC Accelerator, Building Global Innovators, Found.ation and Startup Wise Guys. The teams participated in 8-weeks programs in Riga, Ljubljana, Athens and Lisbon where they were coached by experienced mentors and ran customer experiments. At the end of the program, 27 teams have hit their milestones, incorporated their companies and received a total of 15,000 € to build their MVPs.
Although the teams have started just two months before, their high motivation, fueled by the Venture Program’s intensive pre-acceleration program and by financial support from EIT Digital, enabled them to make a significant leap to the next level: all of them delivered a minimum viable product ready for early adopters and many are proceeding at full steam towards incorporation.
First important results start being visible: in the Balkan region, the location intelligence platform “Hotspoter” is already implementing a pilot with Eurobank in Serbia and the smart gift-card solution “SOS” has acquired Qlandia shopping centers in Slovenia as their first clients. In the Baltics, Ruupi launched a pilot project with a local real-estate agency and KIDNGO has signed its first paying customers. Indre Jurgaite, Founder of KIDNGO says that “the time at Startup Wise Guys and at the EIT Digital Venture program was the best experience a startup could have in very early stages.” Indre was in particular impressed by the two-day bootcamp in Riga with inspiring mentors, who were willing to share the best of their knowledge.
International recognition for the quality of the team is increasing. Recovery Companion, with their social platform for cancer patients, won the LAPhack Health hackathon and Grand Prix in StarterTallinn. Eric Jackson, co-founder of Recovery Companion concludes: “The program was an invaluable source of information for our startup, empowering us to understand all facets of the startup journey”.
Investors looking for new, exciting opportunities are warmly invited to have a close look at these outstanding teams.